Back in March I wrote a story on how JPEG is likely to get replaced by HD Photo. I had no idea I'd be so right

Today the Joint Photographic Experts Group approved the HD Photo format as JPEG XR, a new standard that's going to replace the current JPEG in about an year.

I wrote a C# tutorial on how to create your lil app to convert JPEG/PNG/GIF to HD Photo with only a few lines of code. But that's because it's supported by .NET 3.0. For everything else you can
get the SDK from Microsoft.

I tried out the Photoshop filter the second I found out about it and I'm
very impressed. I hope it doesn't get rejected by the annoying conspiracy theorists that will not like it because of MS's involvement.

﻿I tried out the Photoshop filter the second I found out about it and I'm
very impressed. I hope it doesn't get rejected by the annoying conspiracy theorists that will not like it because of MS's involvement.

Well, the 'everything MS says or does is evil' crowd seem to hold a lot of sway at the moment ...

Our goal is that HD Photo becomes JPEG XR, an open standard under the complete control of the JPEG Committee, with royalty-free rights to all required patents granted by Microsoft. Microsoft is actively participating with the JPEG Committee
to produce a complete and detailed technical specification enabling anyone to create implementations in any programming language, on any platform and under a wide variety of business models.

You can use our implementation as long as you don't use it in GPL software. Not going to win a lot of OSS fans with that. As long as Microsoft doesn't pull the same stunt on the specification itself, then OSS folks can write their own. Otherwise I guess it'll
have to be reverse engineered like NTFS, SMB, and the ever growing list.